I like the concept of trophies / achievements. I think they’re one of the best things to happen to video games, though I’m sure that thought will be countered by many quite vehemently.

The reason why I think so is because they extend the life of a video game. Whereas before you could simply replay a game on another difficulty, now the developers encourage you to fully explore the worlds they’ve created. Most trophies inevitably lead you to unique scenarios (sometimes caused by repetitive attempts at gaining a trophy) or uncover treasures or areas that you’d never have found if left to your own devices.

Where the trophy conundrum gets sour is when people play games for the sake of earning trophies. Sometimes when I’m on the ps3trophy.org forums, I see people with double-digit platinums, bolstered in part by kids games like My Little Pony or something ridiculous, and I wonder how they can walk around in public without any shame.

This is what you are greeted with upon entering heaven.

Ok, so why is this blog entry called ‘trophy guilt’? Well, I’m about 52% done with trophy hunting on Hitman: Absolution, and have decided to call it a day and move on to another game. Usually I note which trophies I’m not going to bother with early in, and in Hitman’s case trophies like Information Is Power (collect all evidence) I couldn’t be bothered to go for.

But I was in the middle of getting the following trophies:  Grand Master (complete 100 challenges), Absolution (complete the game on Professional difficulty), and Silent Assassin (get that rating), and the multi-player trophies. There’s nothing particularly difficult about them at all, it’s just time-consuming. And there’s the rub.

Life is too short. I feel time running out. I have a backlog of cool looking games. I haven’t even played Dark Souls yet! I have to play them before I’m robbed of the chance. I’ve already played Hitman. Sure I haven’t experienced all it has to offer through trophy hunting, but you know what? I didn’t like the game that much, so it should be easier to move on from it, even if I was in the middle of getting a few easy trophies.

So why do I feel this uncomfortable sensation? Guilt? Unrequitement? Indigestion? Perhaps it’s my OCD completist nature. I just hope it doesn’t keep me up at night. It’s not like I’m going to sell off Hitman, it’ll always be there waiting to be platinum’d one day when I have nothing else to do with my time… right? Right!?